Some time ago I started out as a substitute teacher in a school district that was cheek by jowl next to Detroit.  I was already showered and dressed by six a.m. to wait for my assignment via a phone call.  It was a seventh grade class.  I took it.

I entered the classroom and looked around.  There were two things stapled to the bulletin board:  a mapped out route to exit the building in case of a fire, and the month’s school lunch menu.  I wrote my name in shaking cursive on the chalkboard.  Then I went to the teacher’s desk and sat down.  There was a lesson plan book open in front of me.  I stared at what I thought was a lesson plan.

Instead, I saw two words:  “HAVE FUN”.

What the Hell?  I asked myself.  The door banged open and a motley bunch of adolescent miscreants came into the room.  I looked around the room wild eyed.  They were noisy and moved about the room at random.  I stood up and yelled for them to settle down and sit down.  A singular quiet woman who looked as though she had just been pulled through an inner circle of hell came into the room.

I was confused.  She was a room mother, for what’s that worth.  “We are going to the Metro Detroit Airport.  It’s a field trip.” she sighed.

Sweat trickled down my back and butt.  My blood, however, ran cold. I found an attendance book and just counted off names and heads of students.  I already knew that they could make a day of it by switching seats and names.  I saw a bus pull up.  Somehow, the kids did line up and get onto the bus.  The mother and I dragged ourselves onto the bus facing a day full of terror.  She sat in the back of the bus and leaned against the window, asleep.  I stood up as though on a crowded subway and hung onto a pole by the bus stairs.  The driver gave me a smile and off we went.

I could see the whole class from that vantage point.  The kids were so noisy I could not think.  I could not get them to be quiet.  I lost all sense of propriety and said, “SHUT UP!”  It didn’t work.

With some shame I blurted out, “I SAID, SHUT THE FUCK UP”.  It worked!  In moments, it seemed, we arrived.  There was no airport security as there is now.  It was just the airport.  I had dated a pilot and had some knowledge about the airport.  I did not, however, know even one of the kids.

The room mother woke up and followed us into the huge ticketing area. The students raced around, yelling again.  My eyes almost fell out of my head.  A nicely dressed woman came up to me and greeted me with sunshine in her voice.  “I’m your tour guide.”  she said.

“Ummm, I am a substitute teacher and I don’t know any of these kids.  They are a bit wild.” I said.  I gathered the kids to bunch up by me and the martyr of a mom.  We set off on the tour.  The guide moved around the busy area with our flotilla of seventh graders.  I kept counting heads in the swarm.  Then the tour guide got on the escalator, talking in that nice voice that tour guides have when people are silent and paying rapt attention to the words coming out of her mouth.  Our group was neither silent nor paying attention of any kind.

The guide was riding the escalator at the top.  I was somewhere in the middle, and the room mother brought up the rear.  Then I heard it, “Move bitch, get out of my way!”  One of the little shits said that to the guide.  I pushed my way up the escalator to grab that student.  We emptied out onto the second floor and the kids saw bathrooms and nothing else.

I stopped the guide and the mom and we waited for seventh grade type students to exit the bathrooms.  Again, I counted heads to make sure the gang…the literal gang, were all there.  I was missing one.  A boy came out of the bathroom and I grabbed him by the back of his collar.

Two people came up to me and grabbed their son back.  “In one breath I explained and apologized.”  One more boy came out of the bathroom and I asked him, “Are you supposed to be with ME?”  He gave me a dead on stare and joined the group.

I lost the tour guide around that time.  I guess she figured she was not paid enough for her job.  The students and I did not go to the boarding gates.  It was not going to happen on my tour.  They did, however, find the food court.  They scattered all over.  Some had lunch money and some did not.  I opened up my purse and handed out money, with a sad sigh.

I counted heads again and again until I was dizzy.  I ran all the profane words through my head to compose the note I was going to write to the actual teacher.  The mother and I sat and drank black coffee.  The students were happy eaters.  It was the highlight of that day.  We gathered after lunch and the students rode the escalators up and down until the school bus arrived.

Once we were all on the bus I counted heads and asked, “Is anyone here who does not belong here?”  No hands were raised.  I sat behind the bus driver to face the students and sleeping mom.  We reached the school and once again the kids scattered to their lockers and ran, this time out of the building.  Mom went home.  I wrote a “nice” note to the teacher. “Should we meet in the future I am going to tear your heart out and feed it to your students.”

This was the same district where Eminem went to school off Eight Mile. I drove home buzzed and angry.  I unloaded my nerves and ate something only to throw it up.  Next came a crying jag in my bed, still dressed and in heels.

I tossed and turned all night.  I scared my parents when I got up.  The phone rang.  It was for me.  “Would I sub for an art teacher for at least a month because he has had a nervous breakdown?”

Like a fool, I said, “Yes.”

When I looked in my purse I counted my money.  I had two bucks and change.  I did the math.  It had cost me more than I had made that day at the airport.